THE DAY AFTER: Less than 24 hours after sparking a third-period melee in Game 4, forward Mike Rupp was all smiles at Ranges practice at the Garden yesterday. Photo: Anthony J. Causi

Mike Rupp was all smiles at Rangers practice at the Garden yesterday (Anthony J. Causi)

There was no message, no forethought, no metaphorical fire that Mike Rupp was trying to spark on Monday night when he decided to throw a straight left hand to the chest and head of Devils goalie Martin Brodeur.

Instead, with 6:18 gone in the third period of what would turn out to be a Devils 4-1 win in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference final, the Rangers veteran winger was just reacting to a situation.

“In those two seconds, no, I don’t really have time to think about anything,” Rupp said yesterday as his team prepared for tonight’s Game 5 at the Garden, the series tied at two games apiece.

“It was just a reaction,” said Rupp, who received no discipline from the league for the punch. “I actually thought we had been playing really good in the second period and stretches of the third, so it’s just one of those things.”

Playing well might have been happening at some points, but when Rupp was called for a double-minor roughing on a hit to Peter Harrold moments before he attacked Brodeur, the Rangers were down 3-0 and were being severely outplayed in front of the energetic Prudential Center fans.

“I felt like it was a situational call and I just responded in that moment,” Rupp said of his roughing call, which he also noted he was surprised was called at all. “Nothing else going into it besides that. Those things happen in this game, and it’s really not much more than that.”

Rupp, like the rest of the team, is now moving on from that incident, from that game which showed the top-seeded Rangers as a team with its hands full, maybe more so than most thought, with their cross-river rivals.

“That’s not the storyline in this locker room,” Rupp said. “It’s all about playing the best in this series and we have a step in front of us to do that [tonight].”

Brodeur and Rupp won a Stanley Cup together in New Jersey in 2003, one of the two stints Rupp had with the Devils adding up to five seasons. Brodeur, at the wise old age of 40, is over the incident as well.

“It’s all forgotten,” the goaltender said yesterday. “It’s the playoffs. I think you need to put everything in check and what happened in one game usually doesn’t carry in the other ones.”

And although Rupp is over it, he also doesn’t look back at the incident as a blemish.

“I don’t really feel like it’s anything that I need to let go or our team needs to let go,” Rupp said. “We’re focused on the three-game series and we have two of those games at home. So we’re confident in that. We faced that in the first two rounds and we’ll go about it the same way.”

In the first two rounds, the Rangers managed to beat the Senators and Capitals both in seven games, only once winning consecutive games to finish off Ottawa in the opening series. Now they have not only a tough Devils team to overcome, but also all the hoopla that comes with a heated series such as this.

“Our team has responded well all year,” Rupp said, “and we expect to do the same.”